Zimbabwe Cricket Needs to Pay its Players

Rejoining International Test Cricket Won't Mean Much Unless Players Can Make a Living

By

Richard Lord

Sept. 3, 2013 12:43 p.m. ET

Zimbabwean cricketing history, it seems, repeats itself first as farce, and then as farce again, with just a tinge of tragedy thrown in. As Zimbabwe started the first of its two-Test home series against Pakistan Tuesday, the national board finds itself millions of dollars in debt, its players haven't been paid even the nugatory sums they're due, player strikes have been and still are being threatened, and the debilitating player drain that has long bedeviled the country continues apace.

If this all sounds wearily familiar, it is because this is the exact same laundry list of problems that have affected Zimbabwean cricket for the best part of a decade. The country might have been rehabilitated back into Test cricket back in August 2011 after a six-year hiatus, and it might deliver the odd encouraging performance, such as its recent win in the first One-Day International against Pakistan, but the same issues rear their heads because the reasons behind them—and particularly the people behind them—have never gone away.

Zimbabwe continued throughout its self-imposed Test exile to be a full member of the International Cricket Council—the status given to the Test-playing nations, of which there are only 10—and to enjoy the generous financial support that goes with it. Despite that, Zimbabwe Cricket is $18 million in debt, domestic competitions barely splutter along, and the players—the board's most important employees—haven't received their salaries recently.

ENLARGE

Zimbabwe bowler Tendai Chatara in action during the opening day of the first Test match against Pakistan at the Harare Sports Club in Zimbabwe.
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

In protest, the players have recently threatened to boycott both the final ODI and the first Test before agreeing to play on, at one point refusing to train. Two players, leg-spinner Graeme Cremer and batsman Sean Williams, have made themselves unavailable as a result of the current dispute. Endless negotiations with ZC have been led by five senior players, including current captain Brendan Taylor and former captains Prosper Utseya and Elton Chigumbura; the Zimbabwe players are also talking about setting up a union to represent their interests, including their demands for meaningful match fees.

The one critical thing that hasn't happened yet is the board actually paying them, and until it does so the dispute is just going to rumble on. ZC is now saying it will pony up before the second Test, which starts on Sept. 10, something the players are currently having to take on trust. Even if it does so, history suggests that it won't be long before the problem occurs again.

Even when the players do get paid, they don't get much. Back in April this year, a number of non-contracted players threatened not to sign the cricketing equivalent of a zero-hours contract, offering them a few dollars a day, plus match fees if they were lucky, to play for their country.

These aren't the conditions under which professional international sportsmen expect to toil, particularly when they can earn more money playing club cricket overseas. That is precisely what the team's best bowler, 24-year-old Kyle Jarvis, has recently chosen to do, taking employment with domestic teams in England and New Zealand because playing for his country doesn't guarantee him a stable livelihood.

But he is only the latest in a long line of players to do something similar—batsman Craig Ervine did so in April. Indeed you could make several fine international sides from the players lost to Zimbabwe in this way over the past decade. In fact you can almost test the health of Zimbabwe cricket by looking at the rate of defections.

It was at its height just before the crisis in the middle of the previous decade that resulted in the team's withdrawal from Tests. Before that sorry period began, a team filled with stars—such as fast-bowling all-rounder Heath Streak and wicketkeeper-batsman Andy Flower, whose average of 51.54 from 63 Tests puts him in the highest category—had been in the process of establishing itself at cricket's top table. What brought it down were arguments over the way the board managed its players and in particular the way it paid them, resulting in a mass player exodus and a once-strong team reduced to abominable also-rans.

The recent ODI victory shows that the talent is still there today. There was some useful seam bowling up front throughout the three-match series, particularly from Tinashe Panyangara and Tendai Chatara although, in the absence of Jarvis, the team's bowling lacks depth and struggled in the latter half of each innings. The batting is likewise full of promise, but is overly reliant on Taylor and the on-form Hamilton Masakadza.

But it doesn't matter how much talent the team has. As if the players' constant uncertainty about their own futures, particularly financial, weren't enough, the team's chances are also hampered by the chronically inadequate amount of international cricket it plays. It is trapped in a vicious circle: Because Zimbabwe isn't very good, no one wants to play against it, so its chances of making money from series against marquee sides are slim.

For all those reasons, the home team's chances in the Test series of pulling off an upset similar to its lone ODI victory are equally slim; a great performance or two can swing a limited-overs game, but over five days the stronger team overall will usually triumph. And there is no doubt which team that is: A collection of demoralized players, wrangling with their employers over money, seeing a continual trickle of their colleagues head away to less stressful and better remunerated pastures, simply don't have the firepower to overcome an experienced Pakistan side. Pakistan is fourth in the world and boasts a consistent batting lineup and probably the world's best spinner in Saeed Ajmal.

The Zimbabwe players face many of the same problems as their predecessors, and probably as their successors too. The talent is there but money and structure aren't—those things are the board's responsibility, and the Zimbabwe board under the current management has failed to deliver them for almost a decade now. The solution, if Zimbabwean cricket wants to move forward, would appear to be obvious.

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